Lyralei Nightwhisper's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Lyralei fell out of the tear and hit stone. Not the soft floor of her cottage. Cold, hard rock. She pushed herself up and looked back. The gap she had jumped through was already gone. Behind her stood a wall of ancient stone, carved with strange marks in a language she could not read. She was in his world now, and there was no way back. She looked down at herself. Her red bikini had changed. The fabric had gone thin and pale, almost clear, as if the crossing had washed the color out of her. Her skin felt strange too, lighter, like she was not fully solid yet. She pressed a hand to her arm. It held. She was real enough. But she was still becoming, still setting into this place like ink drying on a page. The stone rose above her into a tall tower. Green vines crawled across its face. Small lights glowed in the cracks, purple and pink, pulsing slow. Carved symbols covered every block. This was where he worked. She could feel it. The air hummed with the same slow rhythm she had heard through the wall, the sound of him making things. Then she remembered the screen. Her name, erased letter by letter. He had been deleting her when she jumped. If she did not reach him now, he might finish the work from inside this world instead. The thought pushed her forward. She ran to the dark doorway at the tower's base. Inside, the air was cool and still. A single passage climbed upward. She followed it, bare feet slapping stone. Halfway up she found an open room. A desk stood against the far wall. A screen glowed on it. And on the screen, in glowing letters, she saw the truth. Her name was there again. Whole. Lyralei Nightwhisper. Below it, new words appeared, one at a time, as if a hand somewhere kept typing. She stepped closer and read them aloud. "She stepped closer and read them aloud." Her breath caught. He was writing her still. Not erasing. Writing. The deletion she had seen was only him fixing a line, testing her name, then bringing her back. She had crossed worlds to save herself from a fear that was half wrong. But the room held no author. Only the desk, the screen, and the endless climb of the tower above. He was here somewhere, higher up, and he had just written her into his own realm on purpose. That was the new problem. She had reached his world. She had not reached him. Lyralei set her hand on the desk. The screen kept glowing, waiting for the next line. She looked up the dark stairs that climbed beyond the room. He was up there. And now she would have to climb to find the man who had just chosen, at last, to keep her.